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R. Dibble
Bio R. Dibble is an English handyman who turns up at St. Phillips School For Girls to carry out work on the grounds, such as hanging a few signs. He is completely near-sighted with thick glasses and on arrival he hangs his umbrella on the pipe of a school marm (Bob Todd) trying to sneak a smoke. She later comes up behind him and swats his back while he's trying to hold a sign, forcing him to swallow the nails in his mouth. Dibble also accidentally whacks himself in the head with his hammer, but he does see well enough to guide two girls (Lorraine Doyle and Katie Randall) to the tennis courts. Dibble also moves on to label a glass door which he is unaware is electric; a student goes through it as he's painting it. He soon wanders out to the tennis court himself where a student (Faye Mertens) looking for an opponent invites him to play tennis which results in him getting beaned by the ball, and her getting knocked to her back across the court by his swing. On the archery field, two girls (Samantha Spencer-Lane and Fiona Baker) try teaching Dibble to shoot arrows, and he fires a plunger into the face of the school nurse (Henry McGee) and an arrow into the posterior of another student (Sue Upton), who (suspiciously) wanders too close to the targets with her (matching) umbrella. He flees and hides out in the Ladies Room, thinking it reads "Laddies," confusing a shower head for a phone and accidentally catching a glimpse of a partially nude young lady (Fiona Baker?). He races out where he's discovered by the school staff and students chasing him off the school grounds and around the neighborhood, even as he tries stealing an exercise bike and makes off on a small moped taken from a mechanic (Mike Mulloy, passing a ditch digger Jon Jon Keefe, two glass men (Henry McGee and Jon Jon Keefe) and a truck-driver Mike Mulloy) before getting knocked off the road and into some bushes. Dibble also shows up as a handyman for the Cafe Le L'Opera when its hostess Lorraine Doyle needs a lamp fixed, but he confuses a pear for a light bulb and screws it into the lamp. Incredibly, it works! Trivia * According to William Brown on "Benny's Place," Benny alternates between wearing his old coke-bottle glasses from the earliest days of his Thames run and wearing a newer set of "coke-bottle" glasses which are more distorted and exaggerated which he would wear occasionally from here on in the series. * The school grounds might be in the area and neighborhood around Teddington Studios. * Faye Mertens may be the girl on the exercise bike in the street. * When Benny is on the exercise bike, the crowd is almost right on him, but then the scene "glitches," and they're far away again. * Mike Mulloy plays a cafe patron. He was Benny's double and stand-in in the show's final years following Ken Sedd. Episode(s) * R. Dibble: Handyman Gallery Dibble01.JPG Dibble02.JPG Dibble03.JPG Dibble04.JPG Dibble05.JPG Dibble06.JPG Dibble07.JPG Dibble08.JPG Dibble09.JPG Dibble10.JPG Dibble11.JPG Dibble12.JPG Dibble13.JPG Dibble14.JPG Dibble15.JPG Dibble16.JPG Dibble17.JPG Dibble18.JPG Dibble19.JPG Dibble20.JPG Dibble020.JPG Category: Sketches Category: 1986 Sketches